


we'll be the lucky ones. (you are my only one.)

by blackestofmarkets



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 03:04:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackestofmarkets/pseuds/blackestofmarkets
Summary: They haven’t touched in some time.Not like this.Not since Hal started looking at Dave, five foot eight and eclectic music taste and a smile like whiplash, like he hung the moon and stars.Not since Dirk started looking at evaluations of the Turing test and the Dartmouth proposal at five in the morning, burning through his early morning classes with red text and red miles behind his eyelids.





	we'll be the lucky ones. (you are my only one.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eighth_chiharu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eighth_chiharu/gifts).



_Secant: [ see-kant, -kuh nt]_  
_noun_  
_1. Geometry. an intersecting line, especially one intersecting a curve at two or more points.  
2\. Hal. the way he cuts right through your bone and blood._

 

 

He likes geometry. The shapes, the sizes, the terms.

Counts up in his head _euclidean, non-euclidean, algebraic, analytic_.

One, two, three dimensions.

It’s too bad that even in all five dimensions this world has to offer, the only use for him is peripherally, a tangent touching the radius of other people’s cliques and circles, brushing mildly against what makes up a person.

He is, in the very truest of meaning, quintessentially tangential.

It only enhances the only secant he possesses.

Hal.

 

When they are born, the doctor tells their parents it is a miracle they are not conjoined. They are monozygotic, a singular egg nested inside their mother’s womb, of course, but the egg has split so late that on their first ultrasound, they almost appear to be joined back-to-back. _Always connected but never really seeing each other_ , he says. And their mother, corn hair and cornflower eyes and cornflowers in the hole in her head that opened like a crater when she will be propelled out of the car and onto a late-blooming field of poppies and asters (blue and red and red and red and then a crusted black), _laughs_.

 

In the end, they don’t turn out to be conjoined after all, but they are taken away from the clogging, booming silence of their mother’s womb in a messy four-hour surgery when the next ultrasound shows one of them to be much larger than the other. This time, the doctor uses words like _feto-fetal transfusion syndrome_ and _fluid imbalance_ and worst of all, _lethality rate_.

This time, their mother doesn’t smile. When they are finally in her arms she is conscious, crying with happiness and disbelief, the pain of the stitches in her stomach declawed by the gentle numbing of a steady intravenous drip, its sting reduced to a fuzzy, strange thump against the inside of her ribcage.

 

And because nothing is ever that easy:

They call the recipient twin the abbreviated version of a German chanteuse the 20th century bestowed upon the world. The other is named after the Prince of Wales in a Shakespearean play about kings, rulers and death.

 

Their hair is blond, so blond, just like hers. Sunlight and cornflowers and nothing matters in this moment.

 

 _Not even_ the uncomfortable knowledge that this will be the last time she will be able to hold them for a good-sized chunk of time. There is an army of incubators and red light lamps that await them. A long time until the next time and another long time and then she will never hold them again.

 _Not even_ the fact that one of them is almost three inches longer and a good pound heavier than the other. (Their father names him.)

 _Not even_ that the other is grey and tiny, visibly anaemic and too tired even to squall. (Their mother names him.)

 

In the silence of the night that follows, safely tucked away under a swaddling cloth, the warm light of an incubator lamp and the watchful gaze of the night nurse, Hal lets out a tiny sneeze.

It’s the first time, but it won’t be the last.

  

* * *

 

 

 

Somehow, Dirk always knows when it’s one of _those_ days.

Call it a chemical imbalance, call it preternatural vision, call it whatever astroholistic twin bond any spaced out hippie could come up with, but when he opens his eyes to the faint blue light shining through his thick cotton curtains, he knows.

Or perhaps it’s also the quiet rise and fall of Hal’s voice in the bathroom, cursing so quietly, a nun wouldn’t chastise him for it. He’s usually never so vocal with his displeasure, preferring to quietly ride out whatever has condemned him to wearing that same glazed expression, a bit sharper around the edges than what he usually deigns to shape his face into. But he never, _ever_ talks to himself, not like Dirk does, with his array of bits and strings of code, jeering and pestering him, an endless scroll of message on the screen of his laptop and reflected by his eyes. Whilst the shades have proven to be not only the mostly sole contributor for the elaborate point system their brother has thought out for them, they are imperviously impractical at eleven twenty-eight in the evening when he’s just trying to cram enough information into his brain to sleep without dreaming vividly.

 

The point remains, if he’s even trying to make one at all. Hal doesn’t ever talk to himself, but there he is, combing his hair and tugging at the knots and tangles with the sort of vicious singlemindedness Dirk has come to associate with either his astrophysics pet projects or _Dave_.

When Dirk himself comes stumbling into the bathroom, grip and legs still weak from the night, sticky eyes and morning breath and all, Hal barely even sees him, gritting his teeth through one particular stubborn tangle right under the crown of his hair, where his head ends and neck begins, right where Dirk knows his skin is especially sensitive. The possibility for a force-induced headache suddenly ricochets up rapidly when he tallies up the odds. Especially when Hal begins to murmur darkly about scissors and putting the fear of God into inanimate objects.

 

He doesn’t know how he scrounges up the words, because it’s ten past six and usually they don’t even _acknowledge_ each other that early, but he manages, with one hand in front of his mouth, the other as outstretched as he can bear it.

“Let me,” he says. The unspoken _you’ll tear it out_ hangs in the room and both of them feel its presence keenly.

 

And Hal. Hal who never, ever listens to him, who commands him as easily as he could any army, but still reserves him as his own, painfully aching Achilles’ heel. Hal stops. Deliberates. Turns around on the wooden, creaking chair they’ve commandeered for the bathroom so they both can sit in there without having to share a single toilet seat. The back of his head is facing Dirk, as clearly a silent acquiescence as his own offer was one of peace. The war is not over, but the battle for now is at a stalemate.

 

Dirk takes the comb from his brother’s outstretched hand like an olive branch, handling it as carefully as he would a newborn. Or hopefully would, since he’s never had the dubious pleasure of holding one. There is little to no hesitation in his movements when he steps closer, one hand tilting Hal’s head to the side so he can push the upper half of the short hairs at the back of his neck up and begin to untangle the messy, clumped strands from the very tips, smooth strokes slowly ascending up so he avoids tugging at the upper part of the knot too much.

How Hal gets himself into such dire straits just about four times a week, he’ll never know, but he doesn’t dare ruin the fragile peace they have cultivated carefully in an endless song-and-dance around each other.

 

And, miraculously someone seems to have mercy with either Hal or Dirk himself, because instead of merely enduring his fate like a martyred soul, Hal does actually tilt back into his hands, bending it until his vertebrae crack imposingly. It does have the added of effect of relaxing his shoulders by a minuscule fraction as well as permitting Dirk to take a little weight with the hand not preoccupied, pressing against the base of Hal’s cranium until he gives a barely audible breath, really just a heightened exhale, and _slacks_ just a little.

Allowing Dirk to take just a tiny amount of those ten pounds a head is supposedly weighing, as well as press a thumb against the small muscles right in the groove between neck and head. It doesn’t take much to press right in and wriggle it just the smallest bit, feel those knotted, tense lines of muscles twitch and warm under the pad of his finger.

 

Honestly, he can’t believe his luck. Normally at this time, Hal would have been long gone. Who is he kidding; they wouldn’t have even gotten here with how skittish he himself is and how distrustful his brother has become. However, he’s always been the wild card in Hal’s defence, the chink in his armour. And he’s not about to let an opportunity to (ab)use his position just pass him by.

 

“Maybe it’d be easier if you didn’t just hack at it like you’re Jack London up against a particularly resistant chunk of vines,” he idly comments and it’s really a state to Hal’s lowered inhibitions that his brother doesn’t instantly desert him. Instead he half-hums, half-grunts somewhat close to an acknowledgment and rolls his eyes sluggishly. It’s not a full motion, just the barest lift of his head and the white of his sclerae vanishing, but Dirk understands it nevertheless, almost perversely in tune with his motivation and action in just this moment.

It’s usually never that easy, they’re never synchronized and neither of them can finish the other’s sentences, but curiously enough, they know what they _need_.

It’s not _magic_ , it’s simple psychology and a bit of deductive reasoning born from barely-contained narcissistic introspection.

 

Of course, just as he is preoccupied pondering that, Hal stills. Tenses all over again, a line of stress just about rippling up his spine. If he wouldn’t have somewhat impeccable self-control in semi-public and a vain streak the size of the HNS Beckert, Dirk is absolutely certain he would have let loose a torrential sneeze then and there.

Except. The foundation of reasoning is always a probable hypothesis and never a definite one, so he corrects himself begrudgingly to a possibility that rests somewhere in the high nineties of attainable percentiles.

 

Now that he puts his mind to it, a formidable force if only by vacant self-admission, Hal isn’t sporting the usual pallor that comes with too many three-in-the-mornings and that last swig of cheap 47, too many game over screens and the spiral of smoke out of a bathroom window. He’s pale, as he usually is, a crisscross of tan lines, old scars and juvenile lovers marking his body as well-charted, but unusually so in all the wrong spots.

 

The bathroom feels curiously chilly at the early hour, but even so Dirk can practically feel the heat rising from where just the outer edge of his pinky is brushing up against fine hair and skin and he realizes with a mixture between clinical amusement and unbridled surprise that his brother is indeed, quite hot.

As many literal versus metaphorical jokes could proceed to be made here, he doesn’t exactly have the heart for it, especially when time seems to be of the essence.

 

Sometimes, he feels as if he’s made out of all the wrong materials. As if someone swirling up the metaphorical cocktail that’d one day suffuse his stem cells and bathe his essence in what it would turn out to be took the red tube instead of the green one.

 

They shook him up and mixed him wrong and he doesn’t know what to be for Hal when he doesn’t even know what to be for himself.

 

But on occasions like this, his stride (and isn’t that one for the books, both Hal’s and his brother’s voices mingle: dry, expectant, _fond_ ) never falters, regaining momentum and smoothness with the same patience he coaxes thick strands of hair to part from one particularly obstinate knot. If his brother seems to feel either like or dislike, he makes no motion of showing it except to tilt a little to the side, rolling his neck in what seems to be a suicidal attempt at muscle-relaxation.

Dirk’s hand wanders up, up, up to open the medicine cabinet, disappearing in it whilst Hal is focused on the drag and tug against his scalp.

 

If Roxy were here, he’d make a pun about _break-neck speed_ and she’d laugh so hard the downturned ovals of her eyes would crinkle up and close, smudging her eyeliner against the soft skin of her lids. Hal would wipe the excess mascara and broken lashes from her cheek and let her elbow him with a mixture of exasperation and irreproachable gratitude. And everything would be _fine_. Roxy tends to have that effect on people.

 

The point remains.

Even if they seem to have forgotten how to lay themselves bare from the other, Dirk is still able to read the curve of Hal’s slight scoliosis and freckles like he’s reading a map to the stars.

 

 _Canis major, Orion’s belt, Kassiopeia_ , he counts up the ridges in Hal’s spine methodically, fingers tracing sweat-soaked, sleep-wrinkled fabric.

 _Ursa minor, Pisces, Aquila_ and his voice is as soft as gossamer and as sweet as syrup when the scissors in his other hand cut through the remaining strands of hair like threads, freeing Hal of the last, impossibly clumped wad.

“Let’s get you back to bed.”

 

 _Sirius_.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hal’s mouth is slick and overly hot, red from the grape-flavoured Pedialyte Dirk managed to force down his throat before the first wave of nausea rolled in and he can’t stop watching.

Some tiny, tiny part of his brain is telling him in a manner that can only be described as feral tells him to back off, give Hal his space when he’s evidently burning up with what seems to have affected half their sleepy town’s population.

It’s quite literally child’s play to catch and transmit whatever seems to be ailing Hal now. Flu season seems to flare up whenever a new semester starts and the kindergarteners are again exposed to their classmates bugs and germs. Twice a year it sweeps their town like a cicada infestation, always as punctual as clockwork.

Dirk can appreciate that.

 

What he more appreciates, though, is the minuscule sense of sheen on Hal’s brow as he sits down somewhat heavily on the bed, their trip back from the bathroom a mixture of slow, coaxing steps and their half-hushed argument, both about attendance records and the validity of their interchangeability for said attendance.

There is no doubt about it, his brother looks suitably bedraggled enough to infect a whole first-grade class and as much as Dirk wishes he could hold himself back, it proves to be irresistible enough for him to seek out the brightest star right under Hal’s tongue.

 

They haven’t touched in some time.

Not like this.

Not since Hal started looking at _Dave,_ five foot eight and eclectic music taste and a smile like whiplash, like he hung the stars and the moon and Dirk started looking at evaluations of the Turing test and the Dartmouth proposal at five in the morning, burning through his early morning classes with red text and red miles behind his eyelids.

He’s read _Catch-22_ recently and between _“just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”_ and his _other_ brother’s growing obsession with security systems and curfews he isn’t wholly satisfied with those developments.

 

Still, in a rare show of what can only be described as trust, Hal does allow him to drag the worn, stained tank top over his head, the fabric dragging over particularly sticky skin, eliciting a hiss out of his brother. Dirk wants to throw open the windows and see Hal shiver and curse, see his skin rise in goosebumps, if only to be the one who has the privilege of warming chilled, clammy skin up.

 

As it is, he settles for pushing Hal back onto the bed and ridding him of his sweatpants. Rucks back the sheets and motions for him to climb in. Miraculously, all happens as planned until he is left with his brother’s slack body. Under the blankets,the dip in his waist is a valley, the rise of his ribcage a mountain.

Dirk wishes he had a happy childhood memory of being taught how to care for his sick siblings, but the truth is that they were in this exact situation about six months ago with reversed roles. Mostly, he just remembers throwing up a whole lot.

 

To counter this particular development, he empties out Hal’s trash can, taking note of unused photographs crumpled post-it notes, and chewed gum falling onto the carpet. He doesn’t pick one of the polaroids up. Perhaps that’s for the better, really.

Somewhere deep a thought stirs, his earlier wish realized for the better or worse and he vanishes into the bathroom again under Hal’s slurred, yet astoundingly articulate complaints about sullying his room. It is not until he has filled the bottom of the bucket with water to prevent the smell from being too bad that he emerges, Pedialyte and bucket in other, the telltale green-and-blue bottle in the other.

 

Upon its sight, Hal manages something surprisingly astute about the judgement of Dirk’s character. It involves an unflattering comparison to Dr. H. H. Holmes and a proclivity for animal genitalia. But its effect is somewhat diminished by the fact he looks about two or three throat convulsions away from a cough, not to mention his face’s splotchy red colouring along with the sheen.

 

It’s hard to see the distance they have managed to cross away from each other when Hal’s eyes are on the brink of fluttering shut every time he takes a shallow breath.

It’s hard to press one bottle after another to that mouth instead of his fingers, but Dirk resists temptation in favour of seeing Hal’s throat close smoothly around fluid instead of jerkily around air.

There’s no such thing as pity in his eyes when Hal gags visibly, almost bringing both electrolytes and medication back up in what would be a sickly violet-green swirl. It’s mostly because he’d _despise_ being pitied in this situation and he knows Hal’s pride is greater than his ability to hold grudges and deploy sharp, prickling barbs strategically. Instead there’s a hand over his brother’s mouth, forcing the rising bile and fluid right back down into his stomach.

 

Behind his fingers, Dirk is sure Hal is cursing him six ways to Sunday, but it’s worth it to see the way his eyes cloud over, turn from sharp to soft as soon as the liquid hits the walls of his stomach, relaxing his smooth muscles instinctively.

 

And he wants to turn away, he really does, except Hal’s mouth looks as soft as his eyes and he’s already tugging the blankets back in an invitation that really could not be more ambivalent.

Yet the thought of Hal not only accepting but prompting his closeness in a way they have not been for more time than he dares think about is as powerful as a full cap of the NyQuil he’s left on the nightstand.

 

Hal’s forehead is hot against the very top of his shoulder as Dirk slips into bed with him like an unwarranted guilty thought, the very slightest roll into his body to signal how _out_ of it Hal really is. But _drunken acts are sober thoughts_ and it’s already too late for Dirk not to trace a thumb over the upturn of that cupid’s arch.

To rub away sticky purple and smooth over the slight fuzz either of them try and call stubble.

Rub that tiny scar Hal got when he was six and still loud-mouthed and boisterous, trying to open a can with his mouth. There had been blood everywhere and he had never seen anyone slam the door open as fast as their brother had done when Hal’s shrill wail had pierced the lazy, oppressing atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon.

 

This time, the blankets cocoon them, Hal’s nose against his biceps, his thumb tracing the shell of Hal’s left ear. His brother is breathing laboriously, hot little puffs of air wetting the space right under his deltoids and it shouldn’t feel as good to have Hal pressed up against him, roaming hands searching for what little body warmth the coldness of the bathroom and the hallway hasn’t consumed yet.

But it does and Dirk has never claimed to be anything else but a fool for his brother.

 

They drift for a moment, comfortably conjoined in an almost peaceful mockery of their first ultrasound picture, Hal curled into Dirk’s body with the sort of mindless abandon that could almost be described as creature comfort. The slow drag of Dirk’s hands through his brother’s hair is the only movement except Hal’s heaving chest.

 

Time passes in lazy swirls and minutes of long silence.

Ten minutes pass, twenty. Half an hour.

And just when Dirk is reasonably sure Hal is asleep, moves to detangle himself, those hands, red blood beating underneath that sweat-slicked skin, move to pull him closer, entrap him with deceptively wiry arms and a wet, febrile mouth against the nervous twitch in his jaw.

“You know,” Hal murmurs, voice throaty and roughened by more than sleep, the corners of his lips twitching up as he presses open-mouthed kisses against his.

“Sometimes I wonder if all my blood’s still in you.”

 

Dirk thinks about the numerous ways he could have ended that sentence and the times Hal possibly pondered them. He wants to say _you didn’t kill her_ and _I’m glad you didn’t die for me_ and _I would climb those parallel lines of our lives over and over to get to you_.

But he doesn’t have to, because all he does is reply with the utter naïvety of a germaphobe next to a sick man.

 

“Only one way to find out.”

 

He sees Hal’s doped up, slick teeth, his grin halfway between lovestruck and unhinged and he smiles back against that sweaty skin and those eyes spinning with sickness.

 

Dirk likes geometry because it’s simple, because Hal’s love is the only secant cutting through his circular life.

But when it’s just the two of them in their bedroom the shapes, sizes and terms all fall away in favour of his brother’s damp forehead against the hollow of his throat.

The blinds are half-drawn, painting Hal’s features a glorious orange, saturated with sheen and sweat and _Dirk is so glad he never had to search for Hal, that he had him from the very beginning._

 

Hal’s kiss is as saccharine as the medicine on his tongue, numbing Dirk’s lips and mind equally as the world narrows down impossibly around them. There’s a bitter aftertaste, but Dirk doesn’t mind the sting if the honey is so sweet.

 

He counts down. _Spherical, differential, projective, finite_.

Three dimensions, two dimensions.

One dimension.

Hal.


End file.
